Canyon
by graceofgod
Summary: A long-awaited trip doesn't exactly go according to plan... BIG spoilers for all of S4 up to Wishful Thinking 4x08
1. Tricks & Dust

**A/N: They say confession is good for the soul. Sam talks. That's it. Except for just a smidgen of angst... **

**Film is a shout out to Ilka. Cookies to anyone who gets it.**

~~_C~~_

Ever since September, things have been... weird. Crazy weird, even by our standards. Seems even the amazing, incredible, _wonderful_ things couldn't just be simple. Things like Dean coming back. For just a moment in that crappy hotel in Pontiac, the world was brighter, clearer, the air fresher somehow. It was rank; dirt and sweat layered under cheap soap, and it took Dean another month to finally stop smelling like something the cat dragged in. But it was like stepping out into winter, cold and sharp, a welcome slap in the face.

For a while.

Then there were angels and demons and war and the end of days. Spirits rising and coming after us, all of us; seals and gifts and threats. Even when it wasn't all apocalypse and time travel and Lucifer rising, things were just...

Well, yeah.

Weird.

I mean, Rougarous aren't so left field, not really.

But ghost fever? A shape shifter who thought he was Boris Karloff on a bad day?

Even in our world, that's out there.

And then, couple of days ago, there was this wishing well. Only, it _worked. _Some dork had found a coin, a freaking cursed Babylonian coin that made wishes come true and of course, people are just nuts so it might as well have been the apocalypse starting right there in Concrete, Washington.

But... it got me thinking, you know? Or Dean did anyway. He made a wish to test it. Asked for a damn sub and got a side of e-coli with it but he asked me what I would have wished for and all I heard was this little voice in back of my head that said, _'My wish already came true.'_

I could have wished that I'd found a way to save him from the Pit in the first place.

I could have wished that Mom had never seen the demon, never made that damn deal.

But I just fed him some line about Lilith's head on a plate, some bull that wasn't quite shit, deep down, and thought _'It already came true.'_

Later on, when he'd puked himself inside out and fallen asleep, I couldn't stop thinking it. And I remembered him saying once, he wanted to see the Grand Canyon and we never did, with everything that happened after. _Even _with everything that happened, somehow we never quite found the time to see the Grand freakin' Canyon.

And I thought, _'Maybe that's what I'd wish for.'_

So anyway, after super-hero-kids-gone-bad and the lightning and all of it was done, I figured we could do it. Go see the canyon, I mean. I didn't tell Dean, just made up a hunt in Colorado, hikers going missing and turning up a month later minus their memories and a pint of blood or two and we packed our shit and headed South.

Like I said. Even the good stuff can't just be simple for us.

Guess I should've looked a bit harder before I made up that pile of crap about missing hikers. Turned out I wasn't too far wrong, only it wasn't memories and some blood they were missing. It was their damn hearts.

Been there, done that.

We didn't even know there was a real hunt there. Dean figured out I'd made the whole thing up about ten minutes after we got into town. He was... I don't know. Kind of... sad. Happy, like a kid in Disney, but sad too. Like it didn't mean what he thought it would. Like he could see through the magic and the costumes, and underneath it was just tricks and dust.

Illusion.

We went out there on the first night and the first thing you notice is how quiet it is. We could've been the only people around for a thousand miles or more. It's just, just so old. This massive slice ripped out of the ground, _chewed _out and you can feel every single sunrise and sunset it ever saw, a kind of cumulative pressure that's trying to crush you and hold you up and pull you apart all at the same time.

It was... special.

All the things we've seen, and nothing's ever been _special. _Not like that.

Makes you remember what's worth fighting for.

There's this look he gets, sometimes. I guess he's always had it, I just never noticed before. Then last year, about a month after... after The Deal we were driving through some mid-West state. Iowa? Maybe. It was just cornfields and straight roads, one-horse-towns at the crossroads and sunlight, and Back In Black came on the radio. He didn't say anything, just... got that look. Like he was trying to fix that moment, that song, that place in his memory. Trying to make sure he never forgot it.

He had that same look at the canyon the other night. Right before everything went sideways. He smiled and I thought _'this was a good idea.' _Exactly that. I remember thinking exactly those five words.

I just wanted to give him something back, you know? He sold his soul for me, and I think maybe he did it a long time ago, really, back before I died, before Dad died. So I wanted to give him something.

Should've known better.

Remember that film we saw once? Some awful, import slasher flick about werewolves in freaking Scotland or something and you couldn't decide whether to laugh or be scared. There was that one scene where one of the good guys climbed into the car and there was a Werewolf behind him and you could see the moment he realised it, the instant he figured out he was about to die and there was nothing, _nothing _he could do about it.

It was like that.

We stood there on the edge and I looked right at that damn moon and never thought once about Werewolves. I never thought about any of the monsters and the nightmares. We were just two guys, two regular, normal guys looking at the view and then, I don't know, he must've heard something or seen it in the corner of his eye or something, 'cause he just shoved me out of the way. He looked right at me when it charged him, knocked him straight over the edge and he looked me right in the eye and it was the same as that stupid, crappy film.

He knew he was going to die and it was already too late to stop it.


	2. Been There, Done That

_**A/N: Okay. So Dean's head is a weird place. This didn't turn out at ALL how I thought it was going to, so blame him! Again, this is uneta'd, so apologies in advance for any screw ups. **_

The brain has a neat trick.

It forgets.

I read about it somewhere somewhen. It's supposed to be some sort of survival mechanism; if we couldn't forget things our brains would overload and fry in a year or two at most. And some things you're just not supposed to remember.

Like dying.

I've died before, I know that. More than once; technically dead several times, legally dead a few more. Really dead, once in a dream world and once in this one. Should be in Guinness but I don't remember any of them.

There's a few flashes, sure. Teeth and claws dripping my own blood onto my face in the woods outside Boulder, electricity locking every muscle in my body so tight it felt as though they'd turned to ice, glass shattering and metal twisting as headlights ploughed into us.

The knife in my hand sinking in through my skin, just for an instant, an inch or two.

Things, indescribable creatures dragging me to the floor of a dining room in a suburbian nightmare and tearing me apart.

But I don't remember dying, it just... fades away. That's probably supposed to be a good thing, but right now, I just wish I could remember what to expect.

I don't even know what it was I picked up on, some sound maybe, or just a whiff of the Werewolf's smell - freakin' thing stinks like its been living in the trash since the last full moon and for all I know it has. We didn't even know it was here, after all. But the next thing I know Sam's stumbling away from my shove and me and the Werewolf are going over the edge, no more time to do anything other than stare back up at my brother's pale face against the sky and cling to the memory of the moment I realised what he'd done for me.

It stretches out, a lifetime of that slow-burning comfort when I recognised the town and figured out why we were here. Has to be two years since I said it, since I told him I'd never been here but he remembered. He listened and remembered, and brought us here. Made up some lame excuse about a hunt that, in light of current events I guess wasn't so lame after all. Watching him try to keep the con going was kind of fun though. You could tell he knew that _I _knew he was lying, and that _I _knew that _he _knew I knew. I think. He always did sheepish well, even as a kid, though I never managed to stop him blushing.

After the nutjobs and the crazies of the last couple months, _East Texas _would've been clean, simple fun.

Demons I get, psycho 'shifters and time travel and freakin' _angels..._

Standing at the edge of the Canyon, you can see years laid bare in the rock. Hundreds of years, sliced through and it looks as if it happened in seconds, not centuries. The world faded away, nothing left but me and time, a palpable beat I could almost hear. Listening to it, I suddenly thought of a dozen wishes I should have made. We could have let it be, could have turned the clock back before everything went sideways and left the well as it was. I should have wished that Dad was alive, that _Mom_ was alive, except that felt a little too much like _been there, done that_ after the djinn. I could have given Jess back to Sam, could have forgotten climbing out of my own freakin' grave 'cause if there's one thing no-one should have to remember, it's that.

I should have wiped out the last forty years from my own head 'cause come on, who remembers every single nano-second of every single day of every single on of those four decades?

I do apparently.

Super.

I could have wished that the Grand Canyon didn't make my throat ache for everything I've lost since that lake shore. I could have wished it meant the same thing to me now as it did then but I'm not the same guy and it is pretty cool but a hole in the ground is just a hole in the ground after the things I've seen. They do most things bigger and better down under. Got a real sense of the theatrical, demons.

In that long moment of time, standing there with my brother at my side I think of a hundred wishes I could have made, and it's the same thing that stops me making them now that stopped me making them when I tossed a quarter into the well.

What if it worked? What if _didn't? _How would I know what to do next if I didn't have the next hunt to move on to, or if I knew wishes can't come true?

There's no time to regret it.

I hear someone scream my name, see Sam reach out to me and for a heartbeat I think he can reach me, catch me somehow.

Guess not.

That's when I think I'd really like to know what happens next, then there's nothing.

Forever.


	3. Bouncing

_**A/N: This chapter jumps around a bit, time, place, tense, POV - all are fair game, so be warned!**_

Forever ends with a quiet beep.

Insistent, it drags and tugs at him, tides drawing him back with a whisper he can't quite make out.

_'...'_

It calls him, that whisper, inexorable, irrefutable until he claws up through the nothing, finds his way back and it _hurts, _white-noise static grating against every single raw nerve. There's a hand fisted against his shoulder, the whole world narrowed down to taut fingers and knuckles digging lightly into his skin and he's never quite sure if he makes some sound or if that fist just _knows_ somehow. It doesn't really matter because it shifts against him, rubs bony knuckles across his collarbone as ice rushes through his veins and the fire lifts just long enough for him to think, _morphine rocks _before he goes under again.

He sits.

Grows to hate the clock on the wall with its loud _tick_ that counts off the seconds.

He thinks about smashing it.

Doesn't.

The metronome _click-whoosh _of the respirator is a worse way to mark time.

So he sits.

Waits.

Sometimes swaps chairs when his back cramps and his knees lock from too long in one place.

He drinks eight cups of coffee a day before the nurses switch him to decaf.

Doesn't matter.

He can't sleep anyway.

He'd only dream.

Remember.

Besides, his brother's doing enough sleeping for the both of them.

It's familiar, that sound, that steady, insistent beat. He follows it, running through the dark on legs that don't exist but are still rubbery and shaky. It gets harder to see, the dark never changing but a fog, thick against skin he doesn't have, clouding metaphysical eyes. He blinks them anyway, feels water flick from imaginary lashes and shivers.

Dragging in a painfully chill breath he pushes himself on, the _beep-beep-beep _fading a little, the quiet it leaves behind coldly, utterly terrifying. The surface that _isn't _under his feet shifts, turns rough and rutted and some part of him that can actually manage a coherent thought wonders why the floor inside his head looks like a dirt-track after a fleet of Mack trucks have passed by in the rain. He stumbles in and out of the deep troughs, going down just once, hard, incorporeal skin scraping away, unreal blood warm against illusory fingers as he scrambles back to his feet and runs on, gasping for the cold air.

Fire burns cold in his shoulder and he knots one hand into a fist and presses it against his collarbone, runs on a while then starts as he realises he's rubbing his knuckles in slow circles, counter-clockwise that feels somehow alien and familiar at the same time. He's never been one for counter-clockwise, goes against the grain but he knows who is, knows it bone-deep, soul-deep and that vaguely rational voice in his head inside his head says _Sammy?_

He sleeps.

Can't help it, it's been three days and nothing could keep him awake now.

Sleeps and dreams.

_Stands beside his brother and it's good, it's _**great**_ because Dean is smiling in a way he hasn't in so long, not in months, smiling and he can almost see his brother filing the scene away for keeps._

_Then he's screaming his brother's name; DEEAAN! and stretching, stretching so far he almost goes over the edge as well but he can't reach, can't quite reach, balance wavers and shifts and he throws himself back, sprawls on the ground and his stomach twists in on itself as he hears the first _**thump**_. By the fourth he's retching, dry heaving into the dust, head roaring with adrenaline, hands shaking with it as he shoves to his knees to his feet and starts running, feet flying so fast he wonders if they're touching the ground at all except he knows they are, they must be because he can feel the jolt as each one slams into it, _**th-thud, th-thud. **_It could be his heartbeat he hears instead, except he _**knows **_it isn't beating, can feel the ache in his chest, muscle carbonised to coal, it can't possibly be beating so it must be his feet he hears, _**th-thud, th-thud, th-beep, beep-beep-beep Sammy?**

He jolts awake so fast his head spins fast enough to leave him blind.

"Dean?"

Blinking, shaking sleep and dream out of his head he presses his fist into his brother's shoulder, just shy of painful pressure and almost passes out when he sees eyes roll underneath bruised lids.

The hand resting on his wrist twitches again.

_Sammy?_

He slams his free hand into the call button, turns his fist over and squeezes his brother's as hard as he can as he watches Dean's throat work against the vent.

By the time they leave the hospital two weeks, four days, nine hours and thirteen minutes later, Sam's down to three cups of half-caf, vanilla latte again. He's almost stopped counting time too. Dean's jonesing for any caffeine so much he swipes Sam's second cup of the day and almost earns himself a left hook to the jaw before he gives it back with a grimace of disgust and a badly disguised wistful longing as he watches Sam down it.

He rides on the way out, _hospital policy, _and gripes about it just enough to make his brother's shoulders drop a little, reigning in his complaints as he sees the younger man's jaw tighten. _Don't want to piss Sammy off, after all._

As well as major java-turkey, he comes away from the hospital with a pair of crutches, a cast that stretches from his toes to half-way up his thigh, a five-inch row of stitches along his side from the surgery and a lingering headache from the skull fracture and oedema.

He also seems to have swapped his normally vocal, emo' Sasquatch for a quiet, withdrawn stranger who rarely says more than two words at a time. He's just as considerate of the pounding in Dean's head as he has been through every concussion. (Though not every headache. Hangovers never rated compassion in the Winchester house. Motel. Whatever. The greasy-pork-sandwich-served-up-in-a-dirty-ashtray line was only payback.)

Sam says nothing as he helps Dean ease into the backseat of the Impala, plastered leg propped awkwardly along the seat, crutches dropped haphazardly into the footwell.

He keeps on saying nothing as they put the town in their rearview, says it still as they head West. He wordlessly hands Dean prescriptions, right on time, glares mutely in the mirror at him until Dean takes the pills and the silence follows him down into the drugged haze.

Even there, he can hear it. Nothing. Sullen quiet that rings with something he can't put a name to. It's jarring, disconcerting and there are moments as Sam drives when Dean wonders if he's awake at all or if he's still lying in the ICU, dreaming. Worse, he wonders if he's still falling, _bouncing, Sam said you bounced. _

He scowls in his not-quite-sleep, doesn't see the look his brother slants him as he mumbles, "I don't freakin' bounce," and drifts deeper, back.

_Waking up is a slow effort, riding a lethargic rollercoaster that dips in and out of the world. All the time, he's half-aware of a fist clenched against his shoulder or digging into his wrist._

_When he comes to enough to see his brother, hollow-eyed and gaunt, he smirks tiredly and lays a wobbly pat on Sam's arm, gasps out a rough murmur;_

_'Wasn't quite... what I had... in mind... when I said... wanted to see...Grand Canyon.'_

_That's when Sam goes quiet. _

There's nothing he wants to say.

First time in... _forever_, there's just nothing there.

For three days he talked non-stop, wore his voice down to a whisper on old hunts and prank wars, on the merits of tortured emo- versus mullet-rock and when the nurses weren't around on the _rituale romanum _or the_ vade retro satana_ to exorcise demons.

He's speechless with worry and hope when Dean finally stirs, eight hours after they took him off the vent. Sam's lip is almost bitten clean through, eyes burning and dry as he watches his brother blink sluggishly but the older man's murmur is like a bucket of ice-melt dumped over his head.

And ever since, there's nothing he wants to say.

He can see the worry in his brother's eyes, lurking behind the alternating hazes of drugs and pain but doesn't answer it. He talks to the doctors, listens anyway, answering in monosyllables, Neanderthal grunts that they shrug off, used to relatives reverting to primitive once the initial shock and stress of the accident has worn off.

Dean never shrugs it off, staring blearily a foot to the left of his head, brow creased with concern that isn't anything like as well masked as he probably thinks it is.

But Sam just has nothing to say.

It takes him a while to realise there's plenty he wants to say, just no-one here he wants to say it _to._

He doesn't figure it out until two days before the doctors reluctantly agree to sign Dean out early; AMA of course. Later, he'll wonder if his brother's ever been signed out of hospital any other way, miracle recoveries excluded of course.

That night, that Tuesday before they leave the town behind them, he's sitting in his usual chair, the seat moulded to his backside, comfortable and warm, watching Dean doze fitfully.

It's always been easier to talk to his brother when he was sleeping.

He told Dean about the first time he kissed a girl that way. Told him about the first time a girl blew him off, too, and the first time he made it past first base.

He told his brother about Stanford while Dean slept in another drugged haze. It was whiskey that time, half a bottle of bourbon while John popped a dislocated shoulder into place and Sam pulled splinters from his side and stitched the holes the wall left behind.

He said goodbye while Dean slept, exhausted from standing between Sam and their father while words that wouldn't be taken back for four years flew on both sides.

Said goodbye and slipped out of the apartment unnoticed and almost jumped out of the window of the bus when he found the envelope with four hundred dollars, three condoms and a smiley face scrawled on the flap carrying a crude, unmistakable rifle.

So that Tuesday, as the monitors _beeped _softly in the corner, he sat in the chair and watched his brother sleep and opened his mouth to say _I'm sorry it was too late. I'm sorry it didn't mean as much as it was supposed to. I'm sorry it turned out like this _and nothing came out.

And that was when he realised, it wasn't Dean he wanted to talk to at all.


	4. Back In Black

Waking up is fast, this time.

Jolts up, forgets for a moment that he's in the back seat, that his ribs are cracked and his side is stitched and almost dislocates his hip trying not to slide off the bench and into the footwell.

Blinks for a moment, staring up at soft shade dappled across the roof and thinks, simultaneously; _I know this place _and _where's Sam?_

The space in the front is empty, he knows it without even looking. He checks, just to be sure, his head is still a little fuzzy and hazy and he wants to be certain that Sammy hasn't fallen into the footwell and gotten stuck under the steering wheel again like he did when he was thirteen, all crane-fly arms and legs tangled through the pedals.

He grins faintly remembering it, him and Dad laughing so hard they couldn't stand up, couldn't even breathe while Sam scowled and swore in a crumpled, squashed up mumble.

Footwell's empty.

His eye catches on a wrapper for a moment, snagged by the way it twists in on itself, pulling his attention down into shady infinity until he drags himself away with an effort of will.

The truck going by, horn blaring on the road behind him might have something to do with it too. Whatever. He peers blearily through the windshield, idly noting the bugs splattered on the glass, three days worth at a guess though he can't remember much of it.

Just Sam dragging him into motel rooms, dumping pills down his throat and smoothing blankets gently over his shoulders as he drifted away.

Beyond the spattered glass, he can see the arc of metal over the gates. Didn't need to see it to know where he was, recognised the smell of this place; jasmine and stone and fresh-turned earth, grief raw in the sun and heat.

Blinks again, shakes his head a little, trying to clear the cobwebs and yawns so wide his jaw cracks three times, one after another, perfect hat-trick.

Still no Sammy.

Shrugs, winces as his ribs shift but he knows where his wayward brother will be. Same place he was last - and only - time he was here. Didn't go into the funeral then, didn't seem appropriate somehow but he waited outside the gates, leaning against the side of car in the soft, dappled shade, waited until the last of the mourners filed out in ragged procession, waited until the sun touched the horizon before he walked slowly in through the tombs and the gravestones and came out again dragging Sam blindly with him.

Climbs out of the car, heat hits like a sledgehammer soon as he's out of the sun and damn if he isn't standing in the exact same spot he was three years ago, same crack twisting under his boots looking like a cursive W struck by lightning.

Doesn't make much sense now, either; when he turns his head to look at it from a different direction it degrades into just another hole in the ground.

Manoeuvres his crutches out of the backseat, cringing as the end of one smacks against the window with a sharp _crack._ Shunts the door closed with his hip, awkwardly, wobbling as the world tilt-a-whirls around him then he draws in a hot, sun-heavy breath and huffs it out again and sets off.

Crutches through the tombs and the gravestones, gravel _crunch-scrunching_ under ferrules and foot, inscriptions wavering in the heat-haze. By the time he passes between the same black-granite obelisk and the weeping angel, he's panting, mouth dry, sweat dripping from his hair into his eyes.

He stops so fast, he rocks on his crutches, almost goes down in a heap on the gravel and only saves himself by clutching at the angels' cracked wing.

Sags against it, breath hitching in his throat and listens to his brother _talk, _the way he hasn't in days and miles he can't count now.

_There's this look he gets, sometimes. I guess he's always had it, I just never noticed before. Then last year, about a month after... after The Deal we were driving through some mid-West state. Iowa? Maybe. It was just cornfields and straight roads, one-horse-towns at the crossroads and sunlight, and Back In Black came on the radio. He didn't say anything, just... got that look. Like he was trying to fix that moment, that song, that place in his memory. Trying to make sure he never forgot it._

Bites his lip against the smile that wants to twist it, sour and sad and a solid weight in his chest.

Remembers that day, that drive, that moment when the road stretched on forever and the year seemed like a lifetime and remembers holding tight to the feeling, making it indelible in his memory. Not indelible enough though. First time he's remembered it in forty-odd years.

_He had that same look at the canyon the other night. Right before everything went sideways. He smiled and I thought 'this was a good idea.' Exactly that. I remember thinking exactly those five words._

A small sigh escapes him, aching and tired.

"Was a good idea, Sammy. It was."

Blinks, and for a heartbeat he stands at the edge of the scar in the earth, years laid bare and stripped away to the bedrock.

This time his throat doesn't ache. Doesn't see innocence burned out of his brother's eyes, doesn't taste beer sour in his gut.

Still doesn't mean to him now what it did then, but hurting and breathless he stares into the memory, loses himself in the rock as it twists and tears its way back, smoothed by the world that turned around it for so very, very long.

Smiles a little.

Whispers,

"It was awesome."

_~~*~~_

_**A/N: Well if you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me! Hope you enjoyed the ride, and I'll see you next time...**_


End file.
